Do you wish that there was more equality in our access to information? I do. In the past (i.e. a few decades ago) it used to be far more common for information to be more tightly-held by those with power. However, major employers are pushing data downward into the hands of more people within their organization.
Here is an interesting article about data democratization, a buzzword that warrants some clarity. Author Bernard Marr, in his July 2017 article in Forbes, describes data democratization through general themes. An organization’s internal data is no longer “owned” by the Information Technology department, rather the data is put into the hands of diverse users. Everyone has access to the data and there are no gatekeepers creating an access bottleneck. People from varied ranks and diverse professional backgrounds can use the data to advance their goals. There are down-sides, including redundant efforts by distributed users, concerns about data security, the fact that some data still exists in silos, and misunderstandings by those who don’t deal with the data every day.
It’s important to take this phenomenon seriously as a trend that is building steam, and which is probably here to stay.
In my opinion, the word “democracy” is problematic. For example only those with digital literacy who are inside the organization can take full advantage. Those with more power can use the new information more significantly to their advantage. There also tends to be a winner-takes-all outcome, where the person with the best information and the most sophisticated ability to use it tends to come out ahead.
While you might think that these phenomena imply data is undemocratic, guess again. Electoral democracy, although pure in spirit, tends only to involve between one-half and three-quarters of voters who cast a ballot. Those who are powerful (i.e. business owners and property owners) have a strange ability to get more out of elected governments than others. And those who are the best at politics will tend to win all of the power, leaving others in the dust. Much like parliamentary democracy, data democracy works best for those who have the upper hand. In both cases, the system is a pseudo-democracy of established interests choosing amongst themselves who they will share power with. I think that’s called aristocracy.
Stuart Murray Speaks 